Gates will receive an honorary degree—his first from the University since leaving Harvard to start a small computer company in 1975.

Perhaps the most interesting pair receiving degrees is Summers and Harper.

Harper, the Corporation’s first African-American member and a prominent lawyer, served as a catalyst in the downfall of the president he helped select in 2001.

Four years into Summers’s term, Harper resigned from Harvard’s governing board to protest an increase in Summers’ salary.

After professors at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences declared their lack of confidence in the embattled Mass. Hall chief, Harper wrote in an letter to Summers, “In my judgment, your 2004-2005 conduct, implicating, as it does, profound issues of temperament and judgment, merits no increase whatever.”

This morning the two will share the same stage in Tercentenary Theatre.

—Staff writer Samuel P. Jacobs can be reached jacobs@fas.harvard.edu.

CORRECTION: The June 6 article "Gates, Summers To Receive Honorary Degrees" incorrectly stated that philosopher Richard M. Rorty would receive an honorary degree from the University. In fact, Rorty was unable to travel to Cambridge to accept the award and did not receive a degree, according to a Harvard spokesman. He died on June 8 of pancreatic cancer.